Joseph Michael Lopez - JML, (b. 1973) is an independent photographer born in New York City to a Puerto Rican father and a mother who escaped the Cuban Revolution in 1967. He earned his MFA in 2011 at Columbia University. Lopez began his career as an analog cinematographer on the critically acclaimed Bruce Weber film, Chop Suey (2001). Currently, Joseph divides his time between long-form projects, teaching, and commercial work. His photographs have appeared on the covers of M, The Magazine for Leica M Photography, Leica Fotografie International, The Sunday Review of The New York Times, New York magazine and The New Yorker, among others.

Joseph’s photographs were on exhibit in “Cuban Photography after 1980: Selections from the Museum’s Collection”, at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. In 2016, a commissioned series of his photographs of New York neighborhoods, “New York at Its Core: Future City Lab”, was installed at The Museum of the City of New York. Photographs from JML NYC, the series from which this commission originated, have also been published in the book Bystander: A History of Street Photography, by Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz. JML’s first book JML NYC 02-23 was published by GOST in the fall of 2024. 
 

In episode 250, Joseph discusses, among other things:

• Relocating to Rome from NYC
• His intro to NYC via assisting Bruce Weber
• His early career as a professional assistant
• Shooting with his Leica as a ‘coping mechanism’
• The challenge of creating a cohesive narrative from 20 years of single images
• His Dear New Yorker project
• Why B&W is where his heart is at
• How what we see is who we are
• His approach towards light and sun
• Using digital vs. film
• Assisting Mitch Epstein
• How his opinion on grad school has changed
• Controversy surrounding Columbia University prof. Thomas Roma
• His plans for working in Rome and going forward

Referenced:

• Bruce Weber
• Danny Lyon, Knave of Hearts
• Tod Papageorge
• Chuck Kelton’s darkroom
• Mitch Epstein
• Thomas Roma
• Mohammad Rasoulof

Website | Instagram

“Essentially, it’s about saying something and having a voice and having a perception of the world that is, like singing a loud song you know, your pictures have to say something. And how do you separate yourself from all the noise that’s out there already? You have to have an obsessive, emphatic way to perceive things. I think to a certain extent what we see is who we are in a way.”

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Dina Litovsky is a Ukrainian-born photographer living in New York City since 1991. Dina's imagery can be described as visual sociology. Her work explores the idea of leisure, often focusing on subcultures and social gatherings.

Dina is a regular contributor to National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, TIME, New Yorker, GQ and New York Magazine. In 2020 Dina won the Nannen Prize, Germany's foremost award for documentary photography. Other awards include the PDN 30, New and Emerging Photographers to Watch; POYi; NPPA Best of Photojournalism, International Photography Awards and American Photography.

Selected exhibitions include group and solo shows at the Museum of the City of New York; Noordelicht Festival, Netherlands; Annenberg Space for Photography, LA and the Anastasia Photo Gallery, NYC.

In 2022 she started writing the Substack newsletter In The Flash, an ongoing dialogue about the art and craft of creating and thinking about images. In her weekly posts, she discuses the creative process, focusing on the WHY of photography — intent, meaning, and inspiration. She shares her insights into the world of a professional photographer as well as all the things that make her tick and inspire her to create, from photography to art to music.

Dina holds a bachelor in psychology from NYU and an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts, NY.
 

In episode 248, Dina discusses, among other things:

• Moving to the U.S. from Ukraine at 12 years old
• The immigrant dream of her parents for her to study medicine
• The formative experience of earning her first $40 for shooting a portrait
• Why she couldn’t hold down a job in her early life
• Coming out of wedding photography retirement to write a piece about it
• How working on personal work was the key to getting good editorial clients
• Untag This Photo and Bacherolette being the projects that got her attention
• How her background in psychology plays into the way she approaches shooting her projects
• Her experience of being questioned in a classroom setting - why she does the newsletter
• Her post about why photographers should stop calling themselves artists
• Her approach to Instagram and how she set out to build a huge audience
• How her Substack newsletter began with an invitation from Meta
• Her strategy around building community rather than earning income
• Why working for exposure is photography’s bigges Ponzi scheme
• The importance of pursuing personal work
• Her projects Fashion Week and Meatpacking

Website | Instagram

“I’m an introvert with a social phobia. So I would never draw attention to myself. But with a camera I could actually go where I wanted to go and photograph and confront people, with a shield. And so I think I was using it more as my own self therapy, like I wanted to be in the middle of the party, and I wanted to be on this dancefloor with the young women, but I couldn’t. And so with a camera I was there just photographing it.”

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Ian Howorth is a documentary photographer based in Brighton, UK. His work deals with themes of identity and culture. Through Setanta Books, Ian sold out his first book, Arcadia, in 2019 and published his second, A Country Kind of Silence, in 2023. Ian’s work has been featured in publications including The Guardian, The New York Times, It’s Nice That and Huck.

In episode 248, Ian discusses, among other things:

• Striving to spend as much time as possible not compromising
• The benefits of having a full-time job
• His Instagram strategy
• His previous life as a videographer
• An early fascination for film stock
• Influence of cinema
• The contrast between his trips to Peru and Cuba
• His first book Arcadia
• His origin story in which he lived in 9 homes across 3 countries
• His adventurous dad’s influence on him (and his brothers)
• Having to adapt to a move from Peru to Miami at 12
• His relationship with England and the things he is drawn to photograph there
• Combining documentary with fiction and not wanting to feel constricted
• His second book A A Country Kind of Silence

Referenced:

• Zed Nelson
• Phil Toledano
• Robbie Lawrence
• Max Miechoswski
• Stephen Shore
• William Eggleston
• John Divola
• Gregory Crewdson
• Sean Tucker
• Willam Verbeeck
• National Film & Television School
• Paris Texas
• Tania Franco Klein
• Bill Callaghan
   

Website | Instagram

“Wim Wenders and Robby Müller [In Paris Texas] happened to hit on something that made sense artistically but also looks beautiful aesthetically, and that for me is the perfect marriage. Not everyone can achieve it, but that to me became very important. I wasn’t doing that. I wasn’t smart enough to do that. But at the same time I knew the power of colour - I knew what it did, I understood my emotional response to it. And that was enough for me to pursue it at the time, and I would figure it out later.”

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Ed Sykes is a photographer and visual artist based in London.

Ed’s practice focuses on landscape and changes to the environment as a result of natural processes and human activity. This approach is in conjunction with a re-working of photographic materials and a disruption of traditional photographic production. The processes and effects of climate change are often replicated during the image making process itself. The series 1000 Degrees used a blow torch to melt photographic negatives at a heat similar to the furnaces that propelled the Industrial Revolution. The work Hanging By A Thread pushed this same notion to the picture frames which were sourced secondhand and then the wooden surrounds were charred in a similar way to the subject matter of wildfires. Other approaches have involved sanding and abrasion echoing the effects of coastal erosion and also the use of soluble paper, the dissolution of an image in water, mimicking flood damage.

Ed was the recipient of an Arts Council grant for the project Eco Matters and Sustainable Processes. This saw Ed travel along Britain’s east coast and to some of Europe’s fastest eroding coastlines, embedding a new creative approach to climate change, environment and the anthropocene. In 2021 he was nominated for Prix Pictet Award with1000 Degrees, a response to the historical, industrial exploitation of natural resources in UK.

In episode 247, Ed discusses, among other things:

• Early days on The Independent
• Going to Somalia for ‘Operation Restore Hope’ and being disillusioned by it
• Moving towards portraiture for magazines…
• …and fashion
• Having to take a day job and the feelings that brings up
• Resetting, getting a 4x5 and doing it ‘without compromise’.
• Environmental themes and concerns
• Darkroom practice
• His Arts Council grant to pursue the project Eco Matters and Sustainable Processes
• Using plant-based developer and Agfa Record Rapid paper for the project Rock
• Accepting and embracing mistakes as part of the creative process

Referenced:

• Brian Harris
• Kalpesh Lathigra
• James Nachtwhey
• Paul Lowe
• Chris Steele Perkins
• Delilah Sykes
• Rodrigo Arantia

Website | Instagram

“As a photographer, you want something that drives you on. You need to find something that is close to your heart. And if you have that, you’re gonna go the distance. You’re gonna persevere, you’re gonna get up at four in the morning with the slim chance of getting one picture, because it’s important to you.”

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Featuring:

• Richard Kalvar
• Natalie Keyssar
• Lorenzo Castore
• Edward Burtynsky
• Mitch Epstein
• Nicole Tung
• Linda Troeller
• Valerie Belin
• Michael Ackerman
• Julia Kochetova
• Chloé Jafé
• Debi Cornwall
• Louis Quail
• Abdul Kircher
• Diana Matar
• Kiana Hayeri
• Robbie Lawrence
• Agnieszka Sosnowska
• Polly Braden
• Stephan Vanfleteren

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Featuring:

• Bieke Depoorter
• Jesse Lenz
• Lucas Foglia
• Sergio Purtell
• Richard Sharum
• Mark McLennan
• Alex Webb
• Rebecca-Norris Webb
• Michal Iwanowski
• Dragana Jurisic
• Lisa Barlow
• Toma Gerzha
• Gregory Halpern
• Mark Steinmetz
• Maxime Riché

Website | Instagram

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Stephan Vanfleteren's career began as a staff photographer for the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. He continued to contribute to its weekend magazine as a freelancer until 2009.

His radical black and white social documentary work covers the disappearing phenomena of everyday life in his homeland, Belgium. Over the years, Stephan has worked in conflict zones such as Kosovo, Rwanda and Afghanistan and he is a six time winner of the prestigious World Press Photo awards among a number of other international prizes.

Stephan's intense portrait photography captures the essence of humanity in subjects ranging from the ordinary man to top politicians, sports idols and celebrities.

He has exhibited in Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, London, Liverpool and Verona and his books include: Elvis & Presley (Kruse Verlag, 2001) a road trip across America dressed as Elvis Presley with photographer Robert Huber; Flandrien (Mertz, 2005) on the Flemish obsession with cycling; Belgicum (Lannoo 2007) an enigmatic portrayal of Belgium and Portret 1989-2009 (Lannoo 2009). His most recent books are Atelier published by Hannibal Books, an ode to the ability to observe, represent, elevate, and ultimately, connect, and Present, a journey through his oeuvre, with expansive personal reflections and stories from three decades of encounters and photography, from street photography in world cities like New York to the genocide of Rwanda, from storefront façades to the mystical landscapes of the Atlantic wall, from still lifes to intense portraits, and Charleroi – Il est clair que le gris est noir.

In episode 244, Stephan discusses, among other things:

• Memory
• Photographing (older) men
• Skin… and light
• Cutting his teeth in the newspaper world
• Flandrien book
• Rwanda
• Being scared of success
• Still getting nervous
• Atlantic Wall
• The intensity of collaboration with a subject
• Being perceived as a ‘traitor’ for shooting colour
• His project with Robert Huber, Elvis and Presley
• Dead animals
• Photographing his dad post mortem
• Moving to digital from film
• Charloi residency and his book Charleroi – Il est clair que le gris est noir

Referenced:

• SebastiãoSalgado
• James Nachtwey
• Gilles Peress
• Robert Huber

Website | Instagram

“I was very scared of success. That was maybe my luck. Success was something I had difficulty dealing with. People are complimenting you on your work at the beginning and I’m just accepting that but it was difficult. And it helped me because I never arrived. I was on my way and the doubts were still there. If you think you know how to do it, it’s time to leave. Sometimes if I think ‘ok, I can do that pretty well, Of course other people can do it better, but it’s time to change, to have another approach…’ So I had that in the early beginning, that feeling that I have to change. I love to begin something new.”

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Featuring:

• Javier Hirschfeld Moreno
• Francesco Zizola
• Melissa Schriek
• Chilli Power
• Self Publishers United
• Bryan Schutmaat
• Tiffany Jones
• Atong Atem

Website | Instagram

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Polly Braden is a documentary photographer whose work features an ongoing conversation between the people she photographs and the environment in which they find themselves. Highlighting the small, often unconscious gestures of her subjects, Polly particularly enjoys long-term, in depth collaborations that in turn lends her photographs a unique, quiet intimacy. She works on long-term, self-initiated projects, as well as commissions for international publications.

Polly has produced a large body of work that includes not only solo exhibitions and magazine features, but a number of books published by Dewi Lewis, including Holding The Baby (2022), Out of the Shadows: The Untold Story of People with Autism or Learning Disabilities (2018), and China Between (2010), and two published by Hoxton Mini Press: London’s Square Mile: A Secret City (2019) and Adventures in the Lea Valley), (2016).

Polly teaches regularly at The University of Westminster and London College of Communication (LCC), she is a winner of the Jerwood Photography Prize, The Guardian Young Photographer of the Year, 2002, and the Joanna Drew Bursary 2013. Polly is nominated by Hundred Heroines 2020 and she has exhibited at numerous venues internationally. Her most recent solo exhibition, of her project Leaving Ukraine, just ended at the Foundling Museum in London, where it was on show from March 15th to October 20th 2024.

In episode 242, Polly discusses, among other things:

• Exhitibition at the Foundling Museum, Leaving Ukraine and how it came about
• Some of the people she focussed on
• Holding The Baby , her project on single parents
• Jena’s story
• Why she has started working with film projects
• Her introduction to photography
• Her first trip to China: “an exercise in isolation”
• Her project on Chinese factories and their workers
• Great Interactions book on people with learning disabilities
• Her current project she’s working on
• Securing funding, building partnerships and being an entrepreneur

Referenced:

• Patrick Sutherland
• Cheryl Newman
• Katz Pictures
• Becky Sexton

Website | Instagram

“I’m not someone who wanted to just jump in, point a camera at someone and walk away. I think I’ve always been someone who wanted it to feel very collaborative. Whether you’re on the street and you’ve made eye contact and you feel like someone’s ok with it, at the very basic level, to now as I get older, when I’d be as interested in someone doing all the work and me just being a vehicle through which someone can tell their story.”

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